News

The latest on developments at AB Open and across the wider community.

Karoly Pados Launches The Last USB-UART Dongle You’ll Need

Budapest-based Karoly Pados has launched an isolated USB to UART-TTL adapter, the μArt, which claims it “tolerates common user mistakes without being damaged or causing damage to other hardware” and has already raised more than its required funding on Crowd Supply. “It is no secret that there are many UART… Read More

Foundries.io Launches Commercial Linux, Zephyr ‘microPlatforms’

Foundries.io, a start-up emerging from a two-year stealth period, has announced the release of what it claims to be “the world’s first commercially available, continuously updated Linux and Zephyr real-time operating system (RTOS) microPlatform distributions for the embedded, IoT, edge and automotive markets.” “Over the past two years we have… Read More

SiFive, Nvidia Partner for RISC-V, NVDLA Edge AI SoC

RISC-V pioneer SiFive has announced a partnership with graphics and Arm-based processor giant Nvidia to integrate the former’s RISC-V core intellectual property with the latter’s deep-learning acceleration IP in a single high-performance system-on-chip (SoC) design. “Nvidia open sourced its NVDLA [Nvidia Deep Learning Architecture] architecture to drive the adoption of… Read More

Zephyr Project RTOS Gets RISC-V Partners, Board Support

The Zephyr Project, which maintains an eponymous open-source real-time operating system (RTOS) for the Internet of Things (IoT) under The Linux Foundation, has announced partnerships with SiFive and Antmicro to add RISC-V support to the platform. “RISC-V is about creating open source platforms for the entire world to collaborate on,… Read More

MQTT Misconfiguration Leaves IoT Users Vulnerable, Says Avast

Security specialist Avast has warned of misconfiguration in ‘smart home’ products that are leaving thousands of users vulnerable to attack, thanks to accidental exposure of Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) servers. “Both MQTT and [popular broker software] Mosquitto have broad security capabilities — for example, to provide fine-grained access control… Read More

Bluespec Releases Apache-Licensed Piccolo RISC-V Core

Massachusetts-based Bluespec, a founding member of the RISC-V Foundation, has released the first entry in its open-source RISC-V processor family: the 32-bit three-stage Piccolo. Designed, the company explains, for Internet of Things (IoT) and other embedded uses, the small-footprint Piccolo design uses the 32-bit RV32IM variant of the open RISC-V… Read More

Linux Kernel 4.18 Released, A Week Past Schedule

Linus Torvalds has officially released Linux 4.18, the latest version of the popular open-source kernel, following a week-long delay to fix networking and driver issues – including a problem with cryptographic operations on Arm architecture processors. Announced via the Linux Kernel Mailing List over the weekend, Linux 4.18 brings… Read More

AB Open Confirms Sponsorship of ORConf 2018

AB Open is proud to confirm its sponsorship of ORConf 2018, the open-source digital design conference, to be held this year at the Gdansk University of Technology in Poland. Officially announced by the Free and Open Source Silicon (FOSSi) Foundation today, AB Open’s sponsorship follows our commitment in the… Read More

Dragino LoRaST Adds LoRaWAN Support to NGFF Devices

Devices with M.2 Next-Generation Form Factor (NGFF) slots, typically used for storage devices, can now become LoRaWAN clients thanks to an open-source add-on board from China’s Dragino: The LoRaST. Designed to fit into the M.2 NGFF slots on modern desktop, laptop, and embedded systems, the Dragino LoRaST is based on… Read More

SiFive HiFive1 Board, Courtesy of SiFive

CRU: RISC-V SSDs, Open Satellite Radio, LoRaWAN 1.0.3, and More

This fortnight has been a strong one for the open RISC-V instruction set architecture, starting with the news that IIT Madras has partnered with Intel and HCL Technologies to create an I/O-packed microcontroller test chip in 22nm FinFET that takes aim at ARM Cortex A35/A55 and has successfully booted Linux… Read More

Mobiveil Partners with SiFive for RISC-V-based Programmable Storage

SiFive’s implementation of the open RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA) has scored another design win, this time to power a smart reprogrammable storage device aimed at the data centre and enterprise markets from Mobiveil. Fresh from the announcement of the world’s first RISC-V based SSD controller and SSD implementation… Read More

Planet Labs Launches OpenLST Satellite Radio Platform

Satellite imaging specialist Planet Labs has announced the launch of OpenLST, an open hardware satellite radio platform for communication with remote vehicles, instruments, and stations using low-cost commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) components. “Radio system design is often viewed as a ‘black box’ that is out of reach to all but the most… Read More